Mary Barnett Gilson

Mary Barnett Gilson (September 10, 1877 – March 10, 1969) was an American economist, business executive, and government official. As the manager of Clothcraft Shops' service programs, She and her boss Richard A. Feiss considered scientific management beneficial for employee retention, implementing it in the workplace and employees' homes. After doing academic research, including a master's degree at Columbia University, she wrote Unemployment Insurance in Great Britain and What's Past Is Prologue (1940), became an economics professor at the University of Chicago, and worked as a special mediation representative for the National War Labor Board.

Biography Mary Barnett Gilson was born on September 10, 1877, at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, She returned to England to do research for her 1931 book Unemployment Insurance in Great Britain. She also chaired the Illinois Minimum Wage Commission for the Laundry Industry and Special Advisory Committee on Unemployment Compensation Administrative Methods for Illinois.

In 1940, she published her memoir What's Past Is Prologue. She worked for the National War Labor Board as a special mediation representative from June 1942 until it was regionalized the next year.

Gilson died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on March 10, 1969. Her papers are at the University of North Carolina Wilmington Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History.

Publications Unemployment Insurance in Great Britain (1931) Unemployment Insurance (1932) What's Past Is Prologue (1940)